by Stacy Gail
Even now I could hardly believe how wrong I’d been.
But that wasn’t all on him. Misunderstanding his definition of “safe” was my problem, not his, and I had to find a way to deal with it. I was alive. In his eyes, that was all that mattered.
That was what it was to be protected by Scorpio.
“Dash.” He reached back for my hand, then silently opened the door. “Go. Don’t look at anything. Don’t hesitate. Just run.”
“Come find me.” I couldn’t tell if he heard me over the blaring of the fire alarm and the chaos going on all over the property, but I felt better saying the words. They were a bridge to a time when we would be together again.
I held onto that hope as I did as instructed. But as I zipped across the hall to the door he’d indicated, a chorus of screams erupted somewhere deep in the heart of Celestial Bodies. Those screams mingled with the dangerous scent of smoke, and it had me glancing up the hall toward the Gathering Room.
What the hell…?
The first thing my gaze snagged on was big, gruff Judd. He was lying facedown on the floor at the end of the bar, a dark pool of blood spreading from the head and chest area, a sawed-off shotgun lying next to his beefy hand. It took only a heartbeat to take that scene in, and in that heartbeat I recognized from the size of that pool of blood that Judd would never see his retirement filled with pleasant days on his fishing boat.
Oh, Judd, you sweet man. I’m so sorry.
“Dash, goddamn it, move.”
Forcing the horror and sharp stab of loss into a corner until I could deal with it later, I followed instructions, and moved.
Security lights bloomed on as I ran down the narrow service stairs, my ears filled with the echoes of chaos going on everywhere in the building. I heard someone crying on the stairs above me and a man’s rough voice telling whoever was crying to be quiet. It was good advice, keeping quiet, and I followed it to the best of my ability as I made it down to the basement level with barely a hobble.
Once I got to the door at the bottom of the stairs, I tried to calm the rampaging beat of my heart long enough to listen to what was happening on the other side. But hearing anything was impossible with the fire alarm and general din roaring in the echo chamber of the stairwell. Praying that I wasn’t walking face-first into a death trap, I cracked the door open just wide enough for me to slip inside.
Had it only been a few hours ago that I’d been both shocked and amused by Judd’s explanation of the Spanking Room? The blinking Christmas lights he’d described were everywhere, offering enough illumination to see several people in various states of undress making a mad dash for the exit. I registered a woman in a tiger-striped latex catsuit, a huge mountain of a guy who barely looked legal, and a man wearing nothing more than a black leather thong and a ball gag speeding out the door ahead of me. I followed them, keeping my head down and trying to somehow blend in with them, veering slightly to the right to avoid a black SUV parked by the tree line.
The mountain-sized man-boy was an excellent screen, and I stayed in his shadow until I spied another glossy SUV parked along the perimeter with at least two men inside, watching the building a lot more calmly than the situation called for. Before I got too close to that vehicle that made all my instincts jangle, I found a break in the overgrown tree line and dived in.
The earthy peace within the wooded area was downright eerie compared to the chaos I’d just left behind. My gasps sounded shrill in all that stillness, so I took a minute to calm my breathing and collect my shattered composure as I slumped behind a thick tree trunk. Once the worst of my nerves had settled, my only thought was to get back to where Polo would look for me. Moving low to the ground and as quietly as possible, I doubled back through the trees until I was directly across from the door I’d exited from. The fire alarm was still going off, people were yelling and screaming as they scattered, and cars were peeling out of the parking lot around the old planetarium like rats abandoning a sinking ship.
Total insanity.
The black SUV that I’d first noticed was off to my left and above me since the ground behind the tree line sloped downward into a thicket of what I prayed wasn’t poison oak, because I was huddled right in the middle of it. The night seemed lighter than it should, and I chanced poking my head up to peek at Celestial Bodies. My heart rocketed into my throat when I saw the building was on fire.
Polo.
Panic made me clumsy as I scrambled up the bank behind the SUV. I wasn’t even conscious of moving. The only thing in my head was that I couldn’t lose Polo a second time. I’d tried life without him and found out that it didn’t work for me. It wasn’t life. It was a sick and twisted parody that wasn’t worth living. If I stood there now doing nothing when it was possible I could somehow help him, then fuck it. I’d rather die trying to keep him alive than just stand there.
“Did you get him?”
I froze halfway up the slope and immediately put my head down.
Don’t move.
Don’t breathe.
Don’t see me.
“You’re asking me if I got him?” Shock reverberated through me at the unmistakable sound of my brother’s voice. Halfway convinced my mind had decided to snap under pressure, I chanced a disbelieving glance up at the SUV above me. I couldn’t see anything from this angle, but he sounded no more than a few feet away. “Think, asshole. If I’d gotten Grigor Dmitriyev, would I be standing here with my thumb up my ass next to a fucking huge burning building that every goddamn cop in Chicago’s going to be rolling up on at any minute?”
The cutting tone Knives used went right by me as I frowned in confusion. What the hell? Grigor Dmitriyev? That was my brother’s personal bodyguard and closest friend, almost like a second father. Why would Knives wage this kind of violence to get his hands on Grigor? And what would Grigor be doing here in the first place?
I inched my way up the slope, peeking through the brush to see at least half a dozen of my brother’s new guard had arrived to set up a perimeter around the SUV. His men looked discreetly away from their boss, their guns out like the morons they were and staring hard at the people fleeing the burning building.
What would happen if they spotted Polo as one of those fleeing people?
Nothing, or so I hoped. Polo and Knives had always been like brothers.
So then…what would happen if Polo never fled that burning building?
Oh God.
“Wouldn’t I have already cleared everyone the fuck out if I’d already gotten Grigor?” Knives’s voice continued to berate the underling who had first spoken, though I couldn’t quite see him thanks to the SUV. “No, is the answer to your dumbfuck question. No, I haven’t gotten that sonofabitch Grigor, and no, I haven’t fucking found that hoodie asshole Grigor met up with. Get your fucking eyes checked.”
“My apologies, Knives.”
“Jesus, you’re unbelievable.” Sounding more irritated than angry, my brother sighed shortly. “No, you know what’s unbelievable? That sonofabitch Grigor. He couldn’t just stay dead, could he? Fucker.”
I locked my throat so I wouldn’t make a sound of surprise. Grigor, my brother’s bodyguard, was supposed to be dead? Why did Knives make it sound like he’d expected—even wanted—his bodyguard to be dead?
“This mission is turning into another clusterfuck, you know that?”
“Knives, it’s not that bad.”
“Yeah, it is. It’s just like that ridiculous rooftop scene that blew up in my face a couple months ago. I’d set it up so perfectly, and what happened? Fucking incompetence, that’s what happened. Instead of my sister getting shot, it was Polo who got hit. At this point, I wouldn’t put it past any one of you geniuses to aim at Grigor, and wind up shooting me instead.”
My skin iced over so fast it hurt, and I had to press a hand to my mouth to keep from crying out. It was as though my brother’s words had been tipped with poison; each one tore into me to disintegrate everything that held me together. I didn’t
hear him right, came the immediate denial, while the sudden trembling of my body made a liar out of me. Either that, or I was somehow not understanding his meaning. My brother sure as hell hadn’t meant to sound like he’d been behind Polo’s shooting.
A shooting that had been meant for me.
Agony stabbed through the core of my heart, so horrible and dark it caused tears to streak silently down my cheeks. It couldn’t be, I thought feverishly, clamping my hand tighter around my mouth as if that would stave off the horrified despair ballooning in my chest. Knives was my brother. He loved me. We had our differences, but he would never bring any harm to me.
On its own volition, the memory of Knives dragging me out onto the terrace—something our father never would have allowed—pushed to the fore. I hadn’t been able to believe Knives would be so careless, making both of us such obvious targets when we’d been taught to never expose ourselves unnecessarily.
But now…
Now his actions made a terrible kind of sense.
Except, of course, for the part where my own brother had ordered a sniper to shoot me.
If this was another one of my nightmares, I really wanted to wake up now.
“It’s not a complete loss.” There had been a beat of chastened silence before the unfamiliar voice’s owner moved on. “You’ve sent a strong message to your enemies that there’s nowhere they can hide from you. They’ll take one look at this shithole and understand that the head of the Vitaliev Bratva will burn everything they love down to the ground if they dare to get in your way.”
For a heartbeat, Knives was silent before I heard a huff of laughter. “Holy fuck, you’re something, you know that, Ollie? That tongue of yours is why you’re my favorite bitch. You can suck my dick with your words almost as well as you do with your mouth. Give me your walkie.”
Shock forked through me at the intimate remark. Throughout our growing-up years my brother had been blatantly hetero, and had zero interest in men. But considering what I’d already overheard, it seemed I didn’t know my brother at all.
With great care, I chanced another peek. I could just see my brother’s partial profile, standing at the driver’s front fender with a smaller man at his side, who appeared downright petite compared to Knives’s rangy frame. The man’s face was far paler than my own, and there was a definite grace in the way he handed Knives the walkie talkie. As I studied him, that unusual grace struck a sudden, jarring chord of recognition in my chest.
Wait a minute…
Ollie.
Oh, my God.
Ollie.
Konstantin’s Ollie. The bottle server at the poker game last spring, when everything started to go wrong in my life. The graceful limbs and delicate air of the man who had lured Konstantin in like a siren song.
That Ollie.
This couldn’t be a coincidence. Had Ollie been working at that poker game for the Scorpeones, and then switched sides to work for the Vitaliev Bratva?
No, I rejected the thought immediately as I caught the devotion in Ollie’s expression, now clearly lit by the nightmarish fire engulfing Celestial Bodies. Ollie belonged to Knives, that much was obvious. Someone that devoted to my brother wouldn’t have given Konstantin his phone number. Ollie probably hadn’t known Knives at the time he’d met Konstantin.
Or…
He’d been instructed by Knives to catch Kon’s eye in order to set him up.
My stomach dipped in horror at the thought, and for a second I was afraid I’d throw up—and in the process be discovered. None of this nightmare made sense. Why would Knives do such a thing? Konstantin had worked for him. That made about as much sense as…
As Knives arranging to have a sniper take me out.
“Mischa. Come in.” Knives waited a full five seconds before turning his back to my position to give his attention to the burning building. “Mischa, respond.”
Nothing.
My spine tingled. I had no proof, of course, but I would have bet the proverbial farm that Mischa had just crossed paths with Polo.
No.
Not Polo.
Scorpio.
“Jamal. Eric. Tamir. Sam. Who has eyes on Mischa?”
There was a burst of static. “I haven’t seen Mischa or Eric, or anyone else except a bunch of dudes dressed like fucking rainbow horses. I’m getting the hell outta here now. This place is whacked.”
“If the horses have seen you, kill them, Tamir. In fact, if anyone sees you, kill them. Is that understood?” Knives took his finger off the button, then waited. And waited. “Tamir, respond.”
Nothing.
Bye-bye, Tamir.
“Something’s wrong.” Ollie moved away from the SUV and out of my line of sight. “The fire shouldn’t be interfering with reception. Radiant heat has no effect on shortwave radio signals.”
“Oh really, Mr. Science? Glad I have you along to explain shit a kindergartener knows.” Knives turned, and the sound of a body getting thrown against the side of the SUV made me cringe. “What would I do without you to explain the obvious, my beautiful Ollie? It’s like you think I’m fucking stupid or something.”
“I think you’ve got the most incredible mind I’ve ever known—a mind I’m privileged to help focus,” came the softly strangled response, and it was a strain to hear him over the increasing roar of the fire that I imagined Polo getting caught up in. “We came all the way out here for that traitor Grigor, to put him down once and for all before he can be the spark that starts a war with the Medvedevs.”
The Medvedevs?
“If your soldiers aren’t responding, it’s a good bet Grigor’s gotten to them. So…what do we do?”
For a long time Knives didn’t respond. I was just beginning to think I had missed something when I heard him sigh loudly. Then the walkie talkie belched out another burst of static.
“Anyone who’s still alive and can fucking hear me, you have one minute to get out of there.” My brother pulled the driver’s side door open. “You hear me? One minute. Once you’re out, make sure you’re not followed.”
Static sounded before a tinny male voice responded. “I’ve got your pop’s old whore here. Want me to bring her out?”
“Jesus, you’ve gotta be shitting me. Is Vadim really that stupid?” Knives groaned as if in pain before bringing the walkie up to his mouth. “What the actual fuck would I want with that used-up cow, Vadim? Put a bullet in her and put her out of my misery. I should’ve done that a decade ago when she made me look bad in front of my father. Oh, and by the way, you now have fifty seconds before I have all the entrances chained up and that place becomes a crematorium.”
No!
I was scrambling up the slope before I was consciously aware of what I was doing. But I had to stop Knives from killing Polo and Jubilee. My life didn’t matter to me. Nothing mattered, except saving them.
Before I could get anywhere, a weight landed hard on me while at the same time a hand clamped over my mouth. Fear jolted through me as I jerked my head around as far as I could, and my gaze ran headlong into the silent, screaming torment of Polo’s, his hard face splattered with blood and soot.
“It’s already too late.” The strong scents of smoke and blood filled my nostrils as Polo pressed his mouth to my ear. A world of maddened violence seethed within his whispered words, and with absolute certainty I knew that inside, Polo burned hotter than what remained of Celestial Bodies. “Jubilee’s gone.”
Chapter Thirteen
A purple Mini and a heavy-duty SUV sat parked in front of a pretty white Colonial house with green shutters framing the windows and a front door highlighted by a white-columned front stoop. I stared at the unfamiliar house as Polo slowed almost to a stop, unsure why he’d pulled the Jeep Renegade with tinted windows—a ride he’d exchanged for his sedan at Midway International Airport’s long-term parking lot—up to the curb.
“Who lives here?” After being silent for more than an hour, my voice seemed obscenely loud.
“Rudy Pa
nuzzi. He’s expecting us. Keep your door closed until I say so.”
Before I could think of a response, the garage door activated, loud in the sleepy neighborhood’s pre-dawn bluish glow. Without another word, Polo wheeled up into the driveway and into the garage.
Standing in the house’s interior doorway and dressed in loose basketball-style shorts and a tight T-shirt that looked like it would shred with a single muscle flex, Rudy Panuzzi lowered the door as soon as it was safe to do so.
The moment it was down, Polo opened the car door. “Out.”
Okay.
Stress, grief, and a rage I couldn’t find a way to express locked my jaw as I wordlessly followed instructions. Too much had happened in a short span of hours—being tormented by yet another dream, blowing up at Polo, escaping Celestial Bodies as it was attacked by my brother, seeing Judd dead, hearing Knives order Jubilee’s execution, and discovering my brother wanted me dead. I couldn’t begin to untangle it all.
There was only one thing I did know—my Vitaliev blood had kicked in. Instead of shaking with fear or crying in desolation over the loss of Jubilee, Judd and the horrific lie that was my brother, everything inside me had gone into ice-covered lockdown. I welcomed it as I shut the Jeep’s door, while Polo slammed his so hard it would take a miracle to get it open again.
“Easy, man.” Rudy pitched his voice low, one hand out as I made my way around the front of the Jeep. “Sass is still upstairs asleep and I’d like to keep it that way. I’m not in the mood to lie to her right now.”
“Yeah, well, sometimes you gotta be a cold-blooded bastard and do what you gotta do to protect the woman you love.”
Zing.
Somewhere beneath the ice, I flinched as Polo repeated my words in a harshly grating tone, but my steps didn’t falter as I closed in on Rudy. “We’ll try to keep it quiet.”
“That being said,” Polo added, his tone lethal, “I’ve got a lot to discuss. Shit went down, and it went down bad. Is there someplace where we can talk without waking Sass?”
“My office is the farthest point from our bedroom, so that’ll have to do. Sorry about the mess,” Rudy went on a hushed tone as he led us into a shadow-washed utility room. “We’re still moving in, so boxes are basically our main type of furniture right now.”
